Ponderings on Elevators and War

Today is Wednesday. Hump Day. What's going on in my life today? Well...

I'm pretty proud of myself because I've been somewhat consistent with blogging. Ooh, and another thing I'm proud of is, yesterday I made it all the way to the 19th floor of the Westin Hotel in the elevator! A friend had told me about a jewelry showing there, so I ventured out to look for graduation and birthday gifts. She *hadn't* said the show was on that floor, so I was immediately disappointed when I saw the sign that read, "Jewelry Show--Suite 1921." For years, I've been deathly afraid of elevators. I got really panicky/claustrophobic in an elevator that stopped on me in my 20's, so since then I've had trouble going in them. I resorted to climbing lots of stairs (in some very smarmy stairwells at times) and also asking for low floors when we stayed in rooms in hotels. But thanks to some anti-anxiety medication I took a few years ago, I started back into elevators panic-free. Once off the meds, I forced myself to continue my behavioral therapy by not resorting to stairs. Wow. Now I can really appreciate elevators again. They're fast and efficient. Thank you, Otis the Elevator Man!

The maids are here. Two of them. And there are two men cutting a hole in my bathroom wall. My *new* (as of last year) wall. Apparently there was a cast iron plumbing pipe in there, and when they realized the drywall went right up against it, they cut out the drywall plaster all the way to the paper and let that rest on the pipe. Well, when the pipe gets condensation on it, it wets the drywall, and we'd noticed the wall cracking and being wet. Now they're going to put plastic on it.

It's always *something,* isn't it?

I have to write another scene today. I'm forcing myself to get busy. I really like how this mystery I'm writing is going, but I'm very slow with it at the moment. Not presenting it to anyone for critique, so that means I don't have any real deadlines. Hm, could be a problem!

What else? Dinner at church tonight. We go to a small church, so we're all like family. After that is Bible study. Our teacher, Arnold Schumacher, was in Hitler's youth army. He was pressed into service when he was 14. But he refused to sign the Nazi papers, and I believe he said he refused twice. At that time, my dad was 17 and he lied about his age and joined up to fight for the U.S. When Arnold heard that Dad had been a medic's aide in the war, he said, "Tell your father thank you. If it weren't for the American hospital, I wouldn't be here. They saved my life." Just a little war tidbit that's so interesting to me. We're so trained to think that all the Germans were against us, and we were against all of them. There's always more to a story.

That's it for now, kids! Back to writing. Okay, I'll tell the truth. I've been doing more talking with Silvana, my maid, than writing. Bad Mel. But she's an interesting topic, too. She's from Uruguay. She cleans four or five houses a day, and she's too tired at night to learn English. She wants to, but she can't concentrate. All her friends here speak Spanish. So after five years, she hasn't learned enough English to feel comfortable. I told her if she wants to come over on Saturdays, I can work with her on it. But I suspect she probably won't. I think she needs the down time, anyway. She works very, very hard.

Now I'm really signing off!